Hands 2 Help Quilts

It's time to post the quilts we sent off to Hands 2 Help.  I chose Quilts of Compassion as the charity for my quilts.  They provide quilts to people who've lost their homes to natural disasters.  We've had a lot of tornadoes in the Midwest this past year, so I thought this would be a good use for my quilts.  All the charities were great, so it's hard to choose just one. 

One silver lining of this frigid, endless winter was that I had time to stockpile quite a few quilts in my charity closet!  I sent four off to Quilts of Compassion on Friday.

I made this Boxy Stars lap quilt with Hands 2 Help in mind.  I just love the Boxy Stars pattern and have made this quilt twice.  I think I'll make another one, too.  It is just a nice, relaxing quilt to make.  Bonnie Hunter really has a nice website at Quiltville.com with a ton of free patterns if you've never checked it out; Boxy Stars came from her free pattern section. 

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I also sent this Popcorn the Bear crib-size quilt.  This is made from a cute panel (no piecing required!), and I did a lot of free-motion quilting on it.  It should brighten a child's day.

I also did a lot of free-motion quilting on this Sudoku lap-size quilt.  I wonder if the recipient will realize it's a Sudoku quilt.  I don't think it's terribly obvious unless you know that's what you're looking at.  The two colors that look similar look a little more different in person than in this picture.  All nine fabrics were a different color and texture.  This was a free kit from a retreat I attended.  I added the black sashings and borders.

While digging around in my charity closet I found this lap-size quilt that I made and finished awhile back, so I sent it along, too.  The printed part is bears, so this will make a nice quilt for a child.  There is a nice alphabet print backing on this one.  I think this was line of fabric from KP Kids from awhile back.  The rest of the quilt is pieced, and the whole quilt is meandered.

So they are off to their destination!  I see from the tracking that they've left the Oak Creek facility, so they should be in Toledo by tomorrow.  I hope they will brighten the day of a few people who are having a rough time.

The rest of my quilting is mostly on hold.  I didn't get my UFO #12 done for May for the Country Threads challenge.  I got the quilt out, got the borders on and started quilting it, but just ran out of time.  This weekend was so nice that I decided to sit on the deck and stitch instead of being inside.  It will be hot soon enough and I'll be back inside.  The new free Quilt Along block from Primitive Gatherings also distracted me - it's almost stitched after my deck time this weekend.  I also needed to sew some new screens for our gazebo.  It's not fun sewing, but I will be really happy to have them up in  a few weeks when the mosquitoes are out.  I'm really glad I don't have to sew with fiberglass screening all the time, though.  Cotton is so much more fun and rewarding!